Paytm Inbox Launched – Now Make Payments While You Chat!
With Paytm Mall & Inbox, Paytm will now have the holy trinity of social media; Messaging, Payments & E-commerce!
With Whatsapp all ready to launch the pay feature on their platform, India’s digital payments leader Paytm is looking to bridge a gap between payments and social messaging, before WhatsApp’s offering can gain traction in the Indian market.
WhatsApp has partnered with some of the leading Indian banks and UPI for their payments feature in India. It is directly hitting Paytm’s business as well as other digital payments companies.
To combat the thrust, Paytm has introduced a new ‘Inbox’ feature in their app. It is a messaging service which will allows its users to chat and transact simultaneously.
The Trend Of Social Payments
The ‘Inbox’ feature has all the usual social messaging functionalities like texting and sharing media. It could be a major move towards the trend of social payments in the country.
It has an interface similar to other messengers. One can receive and send requests for funds (like in BHIM app) directly from the chat window.
The Paytm ‘Inbox’ feature is available with the latest Android update, and will soon roll out to iOS.
Hike has a similar UPI-powered ‘chat and pay’ feature on their platform. But Paytm, with a base of over 200 million users has the potential to make the social payments mainstream in India.
Social payments is still at a nascent stage in the country. If digital payments and messaging functionalities can be brought together on a mainstream platform, it could be a game changer.
It’s A Fairly Known Concept
Paytm is trying to do something like WeChat in India, the original pioneer of the concept of social payments. In China, two years back digital payments leader AliPay was pushed back to a mere 50 percent share by WeChat’s in-app Pay.
Merchants can also send notifications for offers and order status directly to customers via Paytm Inbox. Paytm has a huge seller base, and Paytm Mall is among one of the bigger e-commerce companies in the country right now.
WhatsApp allows businesses to communicate commercially on their platform. Paytm may try something similar in a cross-platform model.
The Inbox will allow users to delete texts by using something similar to ‘Delete for All’Â option recently included in WhatsApp.
The messaging platform on Paytm is encrypted end-to-end for better security. Users will be able to chat privately and create groups. They can share media, live location instantly as well as capture images with the camera for instant sharing.
A mix of social messaging, e-commerce and payments blended into one could prove to be a successful formula for Paytm.
Paytm’s latest ‘Inbox’ feature is a direct competitor of WhatsApp’s UPI-powered payment service. How it fares against a bigger competitor, remains to be seen.
